In the film Birth of a Surgeon, WIDE ANGLE travels to Mozambique, where a new public health initiative has helped to cut the rate of women dying in childbirth in half. The program, which trains midwives to perform emergency Cesarean operations, demonstrates how low-cost, community-based health initiatives are changing the face of public health in Africa. The film follows Emilia Cumbane, one of the first midwives-in-training, from her home in the Mozambican capital Maputo, into intensive medical classes, through night shifts in the delivery wards and to the operating table as she fights for recognition of her surgical competence.